


What's in a name?

by Lupi



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Established Relationship, Life Partners, M/M, Mild Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 16:00:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5133628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lupi/pseuds/Lupi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'They’d tried it a few times. The first time had been back in their college days when they’d felt the pressure to define exactly what the deal was with them. Sometimes he thought back to those days and wondered why it was he could love someone so thoroughly but be utterly and completely disinterested in sex with them'</p><p>Established relationship stuff - Yosuke wonders what exactly he and Yu are? How can you be in love but not want someone that way? From a prompt I saw years ago on the Kink Meme but never got around to writing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's in a name?

They’d tried it a few times. The first time had been back in their college days when they’d felt the pressure to define exactly what the deal was with them. Sometimes he thought back to those days and wondered why it was he could love someone so thoroughly but be utterly and completely disinterested in sex with them.

Even stranger was that Yu had thought the same. After that first attempt, an attempt that felt forced and unnatural to both of them, he’d wondered if he was the only one that had been completely, well, underwhelmed. Always unable to control his mouth, he’d blurted out pretty much the same thing as they were cleaning up. Yu’s relieved look told him more than words could have said, but he’d agreed with a rueful smile.

‘What does that mean about us? What are we?’ Yosuke had struggled with the question for some weeks after until Yu told him it didn’t matter. 

At age 19 when Yu reassured him, it mattered and he let the matter drop, drifting back into the beautiful comfortable domestic bliss they had built for themselves. And it was bliss, stupid as it sounded. There was nothing Yosuke liked more than coming home after a shitty day at university, cuddling up with Yu in front of their old TV in their tiny apartment, sharing kisses, warm glances and sweet words.

He wasn’t really sure what they were. What he was. He knew beyond any doubt that he loved Yu, he adored him and he was as confident as a self-conscious, anxiety-ridden Yosuke Hanamura could be, that the feeling was mutual (When he had doubts he’d sometimes catch Yu looking at him with such a fond look that he felt it warm him all the way to his toes and that was a pretty big deal). He didn’t really understand how he could be so thoroughly in love, how he could enjoy kissing, cuddling and holding hands but have zero interest sexually in his lover. It wasn’t that he wasn’t sexually interested in anything else either. He’d felt incredibly guilty the first time it had happened – one of his classmates, Miki, had sort of come on to him and he’d sort of noticed that she was sort of hot. She’d invited him out, ostensibly for a drink but even someone as dense as he could be, knew that her invite was for something much less innocent. To his horror, he found he was tempted to go.

He’d refused and ran out of the building as fast as he could, his heart in his throat and his hands shaking. How could he want to do that when he had Yu, when he adored Yu? He’d been beating his head against the wall when Yu returned home much later, cursing himself and almost in tears about what it could all mean.

Yu’s reaction had been unexpected. He always seemed to know exactly what Yosuke needed and that day had been no exception. He’d made a phone call from another room and an hour or so later, there was a knock on the door. Whatever Yosuke had been expecting, it certainly hadn’t been an extremely hot woman dressed in the sluttiest nurses costume he’d ever seen, let alone imagined. He thought it was a test of his resolve until Yu had sauntered up to the Escort, whispered something in her ear that made her grin and then deliberately, with his eyes fixed on Yosuke, slipped his hands under that low cut top.

After she’d gone he’d not been able to speak for some time and when he did it was some combination of the words ‘fuck, dude, what…?’. Yu had smiled and leaned back on their shared pillows, looking thoroughly sated.

“Good idea, right?” he’d murmured, pressing his lips against Yosuke’s temple. 

Yosuke wasn’t sure if it meant that every encounter from that point would end up as some sort of threesome and he found that he didn’t really mind that thought. He’d kissed Yu back and tugged him back into a hug that ended in arms and legs tangled and both of them grinning like idiots.

“Seriously, what are we?” he asked. Yu had laughed and replied that he didn’t have a bloody clue.

His younger self would have baulked at the thought that often rushed through his mind in his early twenties. It would have been so much easier if he had been gay, if Yu was gay. People seemed to cope better if they could put a label on things. His parents hadn’t taken his declaration particularly well. He could understand, honestly he could, he didn’t get it either – how he could love someone and want to spend his life with someone without being sexually attracted to them? His friends didn’t really get it either. ‘Just admit it already, come out of the closet’, they’d say, not understanding that there was nothing that he’d like more sometimes than to say ‘yep, I’m gay’ as if that would suddenly solve all his problems and he’d magically be able to define exactly what was going on with him and Yu.

Yu’s declaration that it didn’t really matter didn’t hold quite as much weight as it had when he’d been 19 and after a particularly harrowing evening with Yu’s parents, they’d tried again. If anything it was more awkward and unfulfilling than the last time and it had ended with Yosuke in tears and Yu not far behind. He wanted to do anything to make Yu happy but that one thing that should be the culmination of their love (and he was more certain than ever of that love) was denied to them.

They’d tried to be apart for a while after that – tried being ‘normal’ in the eyes of their parents and some of their less discerning friends. Yosuke had dated a few girls, slept with them and he was sure that Yu was doing the same. He’d even tried it with a guy and confirmed to himself that he really wasn’t gay (it was kind of a relief). He’d enjoyed the sex but hated the aftermath, hated thinking about Yu when it was all over. Even though they were trying to be apart, trying to simply be friends again, it still felt like cheating and it tore him apart. He’d only ever wanted to be with Yu and being apart from him only made that ache worsen.

It must have been the same for Yu too – after a break of 6 months where they’d gone cold turkey on all contact, Yu had turned up at Yosuke’s parents’ house. Yosuke had packed all his things in what felt like 2 minutes flat and he’d ran. It was strange that the house he’d grown up in meant nothing to him, even knowing that his parents would probably cut him off after that stunt, he didn’t really care. Home was with Yu. That’s all he wanted and, weirdly enough, as they’d kissed on the crowed Inaba street, in front of a lot of scandalised neighbours and Yosuke’s furious parents, he realised that it was really all he needed.

The forced exile from one another had had some benefits – the distance had increased the certainty and strength in their bond. It had been wonderfully simple to fall back into their shared lives. It also helped them define some sort of new rules, rules that they’d been scared of discussing before.

It still made no sense to Yosuke when he really thought about what he expected from a relationship but it also sort of didn’t matter to him anymore, which was even weirder. He had been worried at first that these external hook-ups would somehow ruin the perfect balance of their own bond, that he’d one day fall for one of the girls and that he would somehow screw up his life with Yu but he realised quickly that nothing, honestly nothing, could make him fall out of love with his best friend. It seemed to be the same for Yu too. If anything the affairs made their bond stronger. They’d both come home, sated and tired and they’d lie together in their bed whispering about their experiences, kissing and touching as if the third party hadn’t been involved in the first place.

It was when Yosuke was approaching his thirtieth birthday that they tried it for the final time. Yu had been lying with his head in Yosuke’s lap as they watched an old DVD. Yosuke’s fingers had been gently tugging their way through Yu’s hair and as he’d leaned down to plant a kiss on his ear, Yu had turned over and smiled in that silly fond way that made Yosuke’s toes curl. They’d kissed, more passionately than they were wont to do, and Yu’s hands had wandered. Yosuke chalked it up to neither of them having any kind of girlfriend in the past few months. They’d tried, really tried and in all honesty, it hadn’t been quite as harrowing as either remembered but it hadn’t been amazing either.

Lying on the couch, Yu’s head still on his bare chest, Yosuke had resumed running his fingers through his hair and murmured that he wished, if there was such thing as wishing, that he wanted Yu in that way. That he wanted to do that again. That life would be better if he did, that they’d be happier... maybe.

Yu had looked up at that and he’d studied Yosuke’s face for a long while, that silver-grey gaze had only sharpened with age. ‘I don’t think us having sex, or not, matters’ he’d said slowly, punctuating the sentence with a brief press of lips against the skin nearest to him. ‘I just need you here with me and I’m happy.’ He’d smiled again and snuggled closer.

Yosuke had a thousand and one protests lined up but was again silenced with a look and then a question, ‘how about you? Are you happy?’

For the first time in a long while he properly considered the question. He tried to picture the alternatives to life without Yu. He thought about couples that he knew – the happiest ones seemed to be friends before lovers and really did it really bother him that his relationship with Yu was romantic rather than sexual? He tried to remember back to those crazy teenaged years when a version of him with cold yellow eyes would have told him the honest answer, no matter how hard it was to hear. There was a radio silence in his head, his shadow had nothing to say in this matter and Jiraiya, no matter how far in the recess of his mind he’d gone now, answered with a very soft whisper. He’d always known, almost from the moment they’d met. He loved Yu. He’d die for Yu and he certainly intended to live for him too. 

He stared into those grey eyes and saw there was no hesitation or doubt there. He realised that Yu trusted that he'd figure it out. And he was right, he had. It was almost annoying the way that Yu seemed to know him better than he knew himself.

‘Yeah, very. This-’ the motion of his hand indicated everything - from their bodies entwined on the sofa to their apartment to the world around them, 'this is what made me happy, what makes me happy. You make me happy' After a pause he added, ‘I just wish I knew what this means about us? What we are, I mean?’

Yu snorted at this and glanced up. ‘I thought you figured that out years ago?’ He only laughed with Yosuke poked his side with some force and spluttered out questions and insults at a rate of knots. After indulging his tirade for a few moments, Yu had kissed his cheek and whispered ‘We’re partners, right?’

Yosuke was silenced. He had glanced at that mop of grey hair now tucked in against his shoulders and sighed happily. Partners sounded just about perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> I've not written any Yu/Yosuke stuff in years so sorry if this was out of character. I recall seeing the prompt years ago about Souji / Yosuke being hetro-life partners and this has been in my head since. Souji, is of course, now known as Yu so it shows how long it's been since I've written anything!


End file.
